Lovely. The Devil had appeared in the reading that had preceded the Keys of Solomon attack last Halloween, our flight from the city, and Ezra’s near death.
“Again,” I growled. “Why is the deck telling me the same thing twice?”
“It’s not. Look.” She twirled her finger above it. “This time, the card is reversed. Instead of being chained, the subject is breaking free. The reversal means freedom, release, and restoring control.”
I darted a glance toward the demon mage at the other end of the room. “Okay, what next?”
“The foundation of your relationship.” She turned the card at the top of the cross. On it was a wheel surrounded by four beings: an angel, an eagle, a bull, and a lion. “The Wheel of Fortune.”
“And what does that mean?”
She gazed at the card, her eyes distant. “Destiny … opportunity … where does the difference lie? Forces outside human control, the ever-turning wheel of change.”
“Huh?”
Her gaze focused. “It means fate, chance, and change. Those are what brought you two together. You are each other’s catalyst for change.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, suppressing a shiver.
“The next card … your present.” She turned the card to reveal the Lovers—a naked man and woman, passionately intertwined.
“Whoa, whoa.” My cheeks heated. “Your cards are jumping the gun, here. I’m not—”
“It isn’t literal, Tori,” Sabrina interrupted, an amused twinkle softening the worry in her eyes. “The Lovers suggest a harmonic balance, but also a choice.”
“About what?”
“It depends. Often it’s about commitment, but it could mean a choice between opposing forces.”
Oh yay.
Her hand drifted to the final card, sitting at the base of the cross, but she didn’t touch it.
“That’s the outcome, isn’t it?” I guessed. “My future.”
Part of me wanted to leap up from the table and flee the room before she could turn that card over. But I knew better.
I couldn’t be sure that I’d chosen to go with the guys when they’d fled the city last Halloween because of Sabrina’s reading, but if I hadn’t been in the abandoned warehouse that night, Burke and his Keys of Solomon cohorts would have killed Ezra, and most likely Aaron and Kai too.
I couldn’t risk not seeing this card. Bracing myself, I waited for her to turn it over.
She stole a glance at me, breathed deep, then flipped the card. It wasn’t the Death card, nor was it the burning Tower from my very first reading. It was one I’d never seen before, its illustration revealing a tree in the shape of a cross, with a man hanging upside-down by one ankle. A halo shone around his head, and his expression was eerily peaceful despite his predicament.
“The Hanged Man.”
My slight hope that it wasn’t bad news snuffed out at her quiet murmur. “What does it mean? Give it to me straight, Sabrina.”
“It means … sacrifice.”
Dread rolled over me. “Are we talking about, like, the ‘I need to give up booze for a month’ sort of sacrifice, or … something else?”
Her gaze flitted away from mine. “There’s no way to be sure.”
“But you can make a diviner-educated guess, right?”
“I prefer not to stray outside the cards’ guidance, as my own biases can influence my—”
“Sabrina.” I waited until she looked back at me. “I know I haven’t been the best about hearing my future, but I’m listening now. You know there’s something going on—something besides all this.” I waved at the pub.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed.
I leaned forward. “This is life or death, Sabrina.”
Biting her lower lip, she contemplated the spread, her forehead crinkled with anxiety. Finally, she straightened in her seat. “All right.”
She laid her hands on the table on either side of the cards, her curled fingers and palms cupped toward them. She held perfectly still, breathing slowly, and for a second time, my awareness of the pub faded away.
Silence fell around us. Complete, impossible silence broken only by my drumming heartbeat and Sabrina’s soft breaths. She exhaled in a long draft. Her eyelids lowered and her pupils disappeared, rolling back in her head.
The atmosphere grew heavy. All the hair on my body stood on end, and tingles rushed over my skin as an intangible weight settled over me. My perception of the pub, its paneled walls, and even the stool I sat on grew even more distant.
Sabrina didn’t move, her back rigid and tendons standing out in her thin wrists.
As my alarmed gaze jumped from her to the cards, the Devil caught my eye. The ink lines of the illustration blurred. The creature’s lips seemed to move with a sneering snarl. The chains he held rattled silently, and the naked man and woman he kept prisoner writhed.
The compass-like disc on the Wheel of Fortune card rotated sedately. The Lovers caressed each other. The woman of Strength pulled the lion’s jaw wider, then faltered. Its jaws snapped shut.
The Hanged Man spun slowly on his dangling rope, turning until his hands, tucked neatly behind his back, were revealed. Leaves fell from the great tree’s boughs as he rotated, but when his face came into view again, his eyes were closed.
No longer an expression of serene contemplation, he wore the lifeless visage of death.
My breath rushed through my throat, panic gathering in my chest as the pressure built. The illustrations seemed to expand, the Devil leaning forward out of his upside-down card, the branches of the Hanged Man’s tree spreading onto the tabletop. The woman with her hand caught in the lion’s jaws looked up at me, and her face had become my face.
Someone strode into our silent bubble of divination.
The pub burst into existence again and I pitched backward on my stool, almost toppling it. The room spun wildly before steadying.
“Deep breaths now, Sabrina. Slow. That’s better.”
Panting, I blinked to clear my confused vision. The new arrival was … Darius?
He stood beside Sabrina’s stool, one hand cupping the back of her head while he gently tugged her hands away from the cards. Her chest heaved
